Welcome to my epic vacation recap! This is a recounting of my ten-year anniversary trip – which also happens to be my first time overseas! Read on for Day 5 – getting on the cruise ship!
June 24, 2024 (Day 5) – Eurostar and Rotterdam
It was an insanely early morning at 4:00 AM and my body, which, as you all know, can no longer do multiple early mornings in a row (vestiges of clinical burnout from a few years ago), was having none of it. All I remember of getting out of the hotel room is a nauseous stomach, aching head, and somehow making it down to the hotel lobby to catch our taxi to the train station.
Of course halfway to the train station, we realized we had given the driver the wrong one!! We told him Victoria station when, actually, it was St. Pancreas. Thankfully he was able to turn us around and that is precisely why we left in plenty of time – for mistakes – well, maybe we didn’t expect to direct our driver to the wrong station – but you know, you always have to plan for odd mishaps!
Anyway, we did make it to the station in time, got through security and passport checks, and the train lobby was SO FREAKING FULL that you couldn’t move without bumping into someone! We managed to procure two coffees and breakfast sandwiches – I forced mine down hoping it would help with my nausea (it didn’t) – and had barely finished that when it was time to board because the line for the sandwiches had taken so long.
I remember getting onto the train, settling into our seats (thank God for reserved seats), snapping a picture for Instagram (and here), and then the entire four-ish hours on the train was spent with me attempting to sleep while telling myself I was never going to feel good again. Daniel, on the other hand, had a great time – he’d been looking super forward to actually taking the Eurostar under the English Channel because how cool is that? To be honest, I had been excited too because I adore trains – but I was ill enough that I did not even care a little bit.
Thankfully, by the time we unloaded in Rotterdam, I had managed to get enough sleep that my stomach and head calmed down and I was surprised to admit to myself that maybe I wouldn’t feel wretched the rest of my life. It took us awhile to figure out how to get out of the train station – apparently you have to scan your ticket for them to let you out. Weird, right? But there were some very eager taxi drivers waiting for us. Of course, English was no longer the first language, so he had no idea what we meant when we said cruise port so we had to pull up the address for him, which I thought interesting.
I was pretty excited to see our cruise ship and was even almost back to normal by that time as my body decided to forgive me for the fourth early morning in a row – I do love cruising! And the lines weren’t super long so in no time at all, we were on the ship and exploring! Unlike Carnival, Celebrity doesn’t greet you with an opportunity to take your picture, which I found disappointing because I think it would have been nice to memorialize that.
We had a fun time exploring the ship. And we realized we are out of practice cruising because we, obviously, had to check our main bags for the ship. Which means we didn’t have any chance of clothing until the suitcases were delivered right before dinner. Which was fine and expected. However, some people planned ahead and pack their bathing suits and were swimming by noon. We were jealous, but what can you do?
Our level of cruising allowed us to enjoy a special welcome/departure event. So, we go to go to the helicopter pad on the front of the ship and sip champagne while we watched the ship leave port. It was a lot of fun, only hampered a little bit by the fact that Celebrity employees tried to get us to pay extra for nicer dinner no less than seven times that day.
We are those people who schedule late dinners on cruise ships and almost always eat in the main dining room. We love getting to know our wait staff, and having all we can eat three course meals. I have to admit, though, Celebrity did not leave the best first impression. Our wait staff seemed almost annoyed to be there, and the main course, which was a huge steak and should have been delicious, was almost raw and not well -seasoned and we ended up leaving early to enjoy the very late sunset from our balcony.
Which turned out to be a good thing! Because right after we got back to the room, we got a call (which we couldn’t answer since we were in the middle of English Channel) from the city telling us we had unusually high water usage. That’s definitely a call you want in the middle of a cruise in another country…thankfully, we were able to text the person from the city, which is how we figured out what the call was for, and stop her just before she shut off our water from the street. A very kind neighbor promptly answered our frantic texts and hurried to the house. Unfortunately, he was a little too prompt and opened the door before we told him the security code and at that moment the WiFi on the cruise ship cut out so we got very close to also having police at the house. The cancellation text apparently finally got through just in time, so at least we dodged that! Anyway, he figured out that one of the flappers in the toilet had broken and, going above and beyond, actually fixed it for us – which was great since we had a guest/house sitter coming to stay for a few days the next day. Crazy, right? It could have been so much worse…but we are soooooo not looking forward to our next water bill.
And that was our first night on the cruise!
Forest Idylls 